Robot Dreams is a collection of stories from the latter half of Asimov's career, studded with some genuine gems (The Last Question, The Ugly Little Boy, Franchise, Hostess), and display his considerable amount of talent. There are a few robot stories at the beginning, but this book centers mostly around Multivac, the great mainframe computer, and a tingling sense of cosmological alienation. Humankind repeatedly turns over vital creative and communal tasks to invisible and arcane machinery, separated from the great masses by a cadre of technician-priests. Or it turns out that our whole civilization is an experiment by cold and vasty intelligence, and we are nearing the point where they decide data collection is over. Asimov is usually seen as one of the cuddlier of the 'greats', less militaristic than Heinlein, less mathematical than Clarke. A more thorough assessment reveals a stark and chilly author, with a deep streak of misanthropy.

And for my own records, that Asimov story about using humans trained in mental math to replace expensive military computers is "The Feeling of Power."